Acknowledgement: notes taken from ed. David Wyatt, New Essays on the Grapes of Wrath (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• In 1940, President Roosevelt announced on the radio that: ‘there are 500,00 Americans that live in the covers
of that book’, referring to Steinbeck’s novel.
• The book was a best seller by May 1939, having first appeared in December 1938.
• In Herald Tribune, the novel was described ‘completely authentic’ (Joseph Henry Jackson).
…however, the book was also described as:
• “complete and absurd untruthfulness”
• Ford’s film version was described as a ‘dirty, filthy manuscript’ (Lyle Boren, congressman)
• The Associated Farmers in California responded with counter-proposals for works called ‘Grapes of Gladness’,
which would portray events in California has harmonious and productive.
The Associated Farmers:
The Associated Farmers of California was an influential anti-labour organisation in California between 1934
and 1939. Agricultural and business leaders formed the organization to counter growing labour activism in
California. The AF was responsible for substantial violence in reaction to agricultural strikes; the creation of
anti-picketing ordinances; and spying on the activities of labour organizations
In many communities The Grapes of Wrath was banned and burned, both for its occasional obscene language
and its general themes. Some viewed it as communist propaganda, and many farmers and agricultural groups
were irate that it fomented anger about their labour practices—the book was “a pack of lies,” the Associated
Farmers of California declared. Steinbeck received regular threats following the book’s publication, and took to
carrying a gun in public, just in case.
The Associated Farmers Association was created as a reaction to the growing labour movement in California in
the 1930s as farmworkers agitated for increased wages and improved working conditions. The AF was
“organised in Fresno on 28 March 1934 by members of the California State Chamber of Commerce and the
California Farm Bureau” and the founders considered it as “an emergency organization set up to prevent a
recurrence of the strikes of 1933.” Numerous farm organizations including the Grange and the Farm Bureau
already existed, but the AF “arose in 1934 out of the numerous citizen associations that were created in 1933 to
combat farmworker unionization.” As the number of annual strikes increased in the 1930s, AF chapters spread
throughout the state, with 42 chapters eventually in place and “the total number of individuals mobilized
probably exceed[ing] 50,000 and may have been as high as 70,000."
The Associated Farmers were determined to prevent any labour actions by agricultural union organizers along
with most labour reforms. They opposed housing programs and the farm minimum wage. They fought against a
bill prohibiting the California Highway Patrol from making arrests in strikes, a bill mandating the inspection of
labour camps by outside parties, and even a bill that would require farmers to provide their workers with
drinking cups. “Not one bill which the Associated Farmers opposed in 1939 got through the legislature.” In
1935, Herman Cottrell, Associated Farmers official and organiser of its paramilitary California Cavaliers,
declared, “We aren't going to stand for any more of these organisers from now on; anyone who peeps about
higher wages will wish he hadn't.”
The Salinas Lettuce Strike:
1936 – violent labour strike about working conditions- fights between police and union workers. Two years
before, vigilantes had burned migrant camps in the area after similar strikes.
The Salinas Lettuce strike of 1934 ran from August 27 to September 24, 1934, in the Salinas Valley of California.
This strike of lettuce cutters and shed workers was begun and largely maintained by the recently formed
Filipino Labour Union and came to highlight ethnic discrimination and union repression. Acts of violence from
, both frustrated workers and vigilante bands threatened the strike's integrity and support base. Ultimately, the
strike ended, and an agreement was reached that gave limited satisfaction to the growers and the workers.
Bum Blockade:
Seeking to halt the “invasion” of Dust Bowl Depression refugees in February 1936, Los Angeles, California
Police Chief James E. Davis declared a “Bum Blockade” to stop the mass emigration of poverty-stricken families
fleeing from the dust-torn states of the Midwest.
As a result, Los Angeles “declared war” on these many emigrants by implementing the “Bum Blockade” in
February 1936. Usurping California’s state powers, Police Chief James E. “Two-Gun” Davis, with the support of
the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, many public officials, the railroads, and hard-pressed state relief
agencies, dispatched 136 police officers to 16 major points of entry on the Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon, with
orders to turn back migrants with “no visible means of support.”
Promising that $1.5 million would be saved on “thieves and thugs” and another $3 million in welfare payments,
most newspapers of the time backed Davis and his blockade, including The Los Angeles Times, which compared
Chief Davis to England’s 16th-century Queen Elizabeth, who “launched the first war on bums.” However, there
was one newspaper – the now-defunct Los Angeles Evening News, which editorialized that the blockade
“violates every principle that Americans hold dear … the right of any citizen to go wherever he pleased.”
Despite some protests, the officers turned back hundreds of railroad-fare evaders, hitchhikers, families in
loaded down trucks and cars, and in the words of the Los Angeles Times, “all other persons who have no
definite purpose in coming into the state.” The railroads obligingly halted freight trains near police outposts
and the “captured” migrants were offered a choice of leaving California or serving a 180-day jail term with hard
labour.
In answer to charges that the blockade was an outrage, the Los Angeles Times editorialized: “Let’s Have More
Outrages” and continued to praise the effort as an answer to the waste of taxpayers’ “hard-got tax money” and a
way to keep out “imported criminals … radicals and troublemakers.”
After a couple of months, Davis’ blockade was finally withdrawn when the use of city funds for this project was
questioned and a number of lawsuits were threatened. In early April, he called his officers home, but claimed
his blockade a success, saying that the 11,000 people who had been turned away caused an “absence of a
seasonal crime wave in Los Angeles.”
The Dust Bowl and westward movement:
In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust
storms began, literally blowing away the crops in “black blizzards” caused by years of poor farming practices
and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain. By 1934, 75% of the United States was severely affected by
this terrible drought. The region most affected – the Great Plains, included more than 100 million acres, centred
in Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, Kansas, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. These millions of acres of
farmland became useless and soon, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.
Many of these destitute families packed up their belongings and migrated west, hoping to find work and a
better life, about 200,000 of which were California bound. Instead of finding the promised land of their dreams;
however, they found that the available labour pool was vastly disproportionate to the number of job openings
that could be filled.
Migrants who found employment soon learned that this surplus of workers caused a significant reduction in
the going wage rate, and even when the entire family worked, they were unable to support themselves. Many
set up “ditch bank” camps along irrigation canals in the farmers’ fields, which fostered poor sanitary conditions
and created a public health problem. And, of those who could find work in agriculture, it did not put an end to
their travels. Instead, their lives were characterized by transience if they wanted to maintain a steady income,
which required them to follow the various harvests around the state.
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